Issue with categories : forums won't display the homepage anymore.

[brieucswales]

Hello,

I ran into a pretty annoying issue last week after upgrading from 0.5.3 to 0.5.4.

The problem is my forum throws me some errors regarding the categories which I can't even access in the admin panel.

Here's a screenshot of the log :

If anyone has an idea on how to fix this, it would be great

[baris]

Can you post the output of the following.

redis-cli
zrange categories:cid 0 -1

That should list the category ids in the database. After that you can check the data for those categories with

hgetall category:<id>

Seems like a category doesn't have proper data or was purged but not removed from categories:cid.

[brieucswales]

@baris Thank you for your quick reply ! Here's the log :

1) "1"
2) "2"
3) "14"
4) "15"
5) "11"
6) "13"
7) "12"
8) "16"
9) "{categories.cid}"

[baris]

That last one definitely looks wrong. If you have all your categories in that range(1,2,11,12,13,14,15,16). You can remove that last one with.

redis-cli
zrem categories:cid "{categories.cid}"

[brieucswales]

@baris And ... it works again ! Thank you for your help !

[baris]

No problem. I am curious as to why that value is in categories:cid if you can manage to repro that would be helpful. You seem to have deleted some categories was this an imported forum by any chance?

[TaLoche]

Hello, I have the same issue as @brieucswales

I used the drag and drop in the admin panel, in the manage/categories section, to move up a category and now I have the same error and strange behaviour.

In order to be able to repair the damaged category what would be the command with Mongo since the solution above is for redis?

Thanks for your help!

[baris]

@TaLoche first grab the list of category ids

mongo
db.objects.find({_key:"categories:cid"}).pretty();

Then to remove the wrong one.

db.objects.remove({_key:"categories:cid", value: "<insert_cid_here>"});

I will see if can reproduce this.

[TaLoche]

@baris Thanks!

The category causing all the trouble

"_id" : ObjectId("547e1db2f303ddd981c99ad0"),
"_key" : "categories:cid",
"score" : 1,
"value" : "2"

When it should be

"_id" : ObjectId("547e1db2f303ddd981c99ad0"),
"_key" : "categories:cid",
"value" : "2"
"score" : 1,

Is there a way to change that without removing the category as you suggested? It's a big category with a lot of topics in it. I don't want to purge it if I have a choice.

[baris]

Those two objects look identical to me, both have score:1 and value:2. In this case score is the order and value is the category id.

Can you post the full output of db.objects.find({_key:"categories:cid"}).pretty();

[TaLoche]

sorry wrong pasted code! I've updated my previous message.

[TaLoche]

{
"_id" : ObjectId("54902fe6e0b2fdca2defe7f7"),
"_key" : "categories:cid",
"value" : "3",
"score" : 4
}
{
"_id" : ObjectId("547e1db2f303ddd981c99ad0"),
"_key" : "categories:cid",
"score" : 1,
"value" : "2"
}
{
"_id" : ObjectId("54902e94e0b2fdca2defc05c"),
"_key" : "categories:cid",
"value" : "15",
"score" : 2
}
{
"_id" : ObjectId("54902e16e0b2fdca2def9e07"),
"_key" : "categories:cid",
"value" : "14",
"score" : 5
}
{
"_id" : ObjectId("548ecd53e0b2fdca2def5123"),
"_key" : "categories:cid",
"value" : "13",
"score" : 6
}
{
"_id" : ObjectId("548ecae1e0b2fdca2def493e"),
"_key" : "categories:cid",
"value" : "12",
"score" : 3
}
{
"_id" : ObjectId("548ec825e0b2fdca2def493b"),
"_key" : "categories:cid",
"value" : "11",
"score" : 4
}

[baris]

You category ids look good, there is only a dupe score of 4 but that shouldn't break anything, what problem are you having? Is the category not visible on the home page? Is there any crashes in the output.log.

[TaLoche]

Ok, I thought that the second category having it's value and score not in the same order as the others was the issue.

I can hardly access my admin panel, but I manage to go in every section, except the categories one.

On my front page I have "Failed to lookup view "footer" in views directory" or Failed to lookup view "admin/footer" in views directory

When I check my log, I have the exact issue as @brieucswales (his screenshot).
I have tried, restarting and rebooting, nothing changes.
If I stay on the homepage or admin panel every 30 secondes, I have a refresh notification that keeps poping-up even if I have already refreshed the page.

Since drag and dropping that category was the last thing I did, I'm guessing that's the issue. Since when I log out, I can see all the categories on the homepage except the one that I drag and dropped.

[baris]

Sounds like something else is not working properly, the refresh icon is an indication of sockets disconnecting and trying to reconnect. Is you forum public?

[TaLoche]

@baris Ah crap! I had all my hopes on this category thing.

For now my nodebb forum in hosted on DigitalOcean but I'm the only one having fun with it for now.
I had help from Nifty to export my old forum (mybb) onto my droplet. I was just cleaning up by setting up new categories, deleting some topics and I was about to set up a theme and plugins.

[baris]

If you have a public url that you can share post it maybe sockets aren't setup properly. Your browser console should give more info as well.

Another way to confirm if your category data is good is to go to http://yourforum.com/api that should return all the categories on the homepage.

[TaLoche]

This post is deleted!

[TaLoche]

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2014-12-16T18:35:02.711Z - error: TypeError: Cannot read property 'parentCid' of null
    at /home/nodebb/nodebb/src/categories.js:427:31
    at Array.filter (native)
    at /home/nodebb/nodebb/src/categories.js:426:28
    at /home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:249:17
    at /home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:125:13
    at Array.forEach (native)
    at _each (/home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:46:24)
    at async.each (/home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:124:9)
    at _asyncMap (/home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:248:13)
    at Object.map (/home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:219:23)
TypeError: Cannot read property 'parentCid' of null
    at /home/nodebb/nodebb/src/categories.js:427:31
    at Array.filter (native)
    at /home/nodebb/nodebb/src/categories.js:426:28
    at /home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:249:17
    at /home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:125:13
    at Array.forEach (native)
    at _each (/home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:46:24)
    at async.each (/home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:124:9)
    at _asyncMap (/home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:248:13)
    at Object.map (/home/nodebb/nodebb/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:219:23)
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[baris]

Can you post the output of the following

db.objects.find({_key:"category:2"}).pretty();
db.objects.find({_key:"category:3"}).pretty();
db.objects.find({_key:"category:11"}).pretty();
db.objects.find({_key:"category:12"}).pretty();
db.objects.find({_key:"category:13"}).pretty();
db.objects.find({_key:"category:14"}).pretty();
db.objects.find({_key:"category:15"}).pretty();

Any of those empty?